


queen of the night

by mangolani



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), First Dates, First Kiss, Flirting, Fluff, M/M, Making Out, Post-Canon, They're both 17, gon falling in love & being extremely confused by it, sweet & pure times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26800483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangolani/pseuds/mangolani
Summary: Killua had a way of taking all the things that were just okay in Gon’s life and twisting them into things he had never known he could live without.Killua and Gon go on their first date.
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck
Comments: 23
Kudos: 156





	queen of the night

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by my gaaf [@cachinnation31](/users/cachinnation31/pseuds/cachinnation31) to whom i owe my life + undying love for putting up with my first fic anxieties  
> 

“Gon,” Killua hissed. “ _What_ are you _doing_.”

From his perch atop the towering ornate iron gate, Gon tilted his head and flashed a smile. “Climbing the fence!” He chirped.

From this high up, the angle of the dim moonlight cut directly across Killua’s face, making his furrowed eyebrows almost transparent. “I can see that,” he said. “Why are you climbing the fence.”

“There’s a garden in here!” An easy backflip had Gon landing on the manicured lawn of the interior. All he received for his (frankly, impressive) acrobatic feat was a skeptical look from between the black iron bars. “C’mon Killua, it’s just this, and then I swear the date will be over.”

Killua looked away sharply. “It’s not that,” he grumbled, yanking one hand out of his pocket to push back his silver curls. “It’s— I mean the gate is probably there for a reason.”

“Oh yeah! This garden is on private property.”

“Priv— Idiot! You’re trespassing!”

“It’s only trespassing if you get caught!”

“That’s literally not how it works!”

Gon crossed his arms, took a deep breath, and fixed Killua with the most pathetic-looking puppy eyes he could muster. "Killuaaaaa," he whined, as though they were back to being thirteen.

He waited out the all of three seconds it took for the other boy’s resolve to crumble.

“You realize what we’re doing is very illegal, right.” Killua snorted.

“I’m sure whoever lives here would want people to see their beautiful plants anyway!”

“Oh yeah? Then what’s the gate for?”

Gon pondered this. “A challenge!” He replied, watching as Killua sprung cat-like onto the gate, then landed deftly a few feet away from Gon.

“Not much of a challenge.” Killua rose from his crouch to approach Gon, the moon backlighting his hair, his shoulders, his smug posture. _He was so, so pretty._ The words threatened to spill out of Gon’s mouth, and maybe before, when they were younger, they would’ve. But he was older now, better at controlling himself. Better at reading Killua. Comments like that, seemingly unprompted compliments, were never received well. Defenses went up. Killua only wanted compliments when he felt like he deserved them— anything outside of that was immediately read as manipulation, insincerity. Sometimes Gon itched to link their pinkies together and tell Killua that being kind, being _good_ , despite all of the evil that had been done to him was the greatest accomplishment imaginable. He wanted to say that that _alone_ had earned him all the kind words in the world. 

That would _definitely_ be considered an unprompted compliment.

Instead, Gon idled, thinking, before amending: “Not much of a challenge, _if you’re Killua_.” He was greeted with an eye-roll and the slightest upward tug of pale lips.

“Just show me the garden, asshole.” 

* * *

Gon led Killua through the garden’s hedged walls and quietly murmuring marble fountains. The grounds were massive— well-tended to and tastefully populated with hundreds of species of flowers. Gon hardly gave them a second glance as he instinctively navigated the sections of perfectly manicured flower beds. He could feel Killua’s aura directly behind him as they weaved through the hedges, and when the sky darkened a bit further, it was second nature to reach blindly behind and tangle their fingers together before taking off.

“Why are we running?” Killua shouted, palm tight against his.

“It’s getting darker!” Gon shouted back and left it at that.

They finally came to a halt in front of another iron gate. Gon clambered over it easily with Killua on his heels. Their fingers never separated. The sky had just deepened from midnight blue to pure black, stars shimmering into view like moon-kissed freckles on the horizon.

Though Gon hadn’t expected anything bad to happen, he was still relieved to see the tiny section of garden exactly as he had originally discovered it. The brick-walled area of the garden was virtually bare, save for a small patch of dirt directly in the center, in which a gangly stalk labored to support the weight of a handful of salmon-colored pods.

Killua stared at the plant, then back at Gon. He did not look particularly impressed with either organism. “You brought me to see a cactus.”

“Yep!”

Killua glanced back warily at it, as if expecting it to pull a knife on them at any second. “Is this… all?” 

A giggle escaped Gon. “Just wait, Killua.”

Killua looked so adorably disgruntled by this unassuming cactus that Gon couldn’t help but to reach for his other hand. He grasped Killua’s warm palms in each of his so that they turned to look at one another. This action was met with a scrutinizing stare, but thankfully Killua didn’t drop his hands. If anything, he seemed to squeeze their palms tighter together as he asked, “So tell me, do all of your dates have to do with plants?”

“You’ve only been on one date with me Killua! And that’s this one! How would you know?”

Killua glanced up at the stars and shared a private smirk with them. “Lucky guess.”

“Hmm.” Gon swung their conjoined hands between them, watching as Killua’s smile dropped into bewilderment, like he hadn’t realized you could hold not one, but two hands and swing _both of them._ “I guess? I mean, I like showing people what I know about nature, and it’s not like there was much else to do on Whale Island for a date. The only thing I ever took anyone else to do was nature stuff.” The bewilderment dropped into a scowl, and Gon grinned as Killua’s grip on his hands tightened further. “Don’t worry,” he teased lightly. “Only you’ve gotten to see what I’m showing you.”

“Whatever.” Killua muttered. His grip didn’t relent.

A slight tremor in the heavy bulbs of the plant distracted Gon from further prodding. Instead, he watched as the slightest hints of white began to peek out from the unfolding bud. “Oh, Killua! Look!”

Slowly, almost hesitantly, the white petals of the bulb began to unfurl. The thin strips on the exterior straightened out first, tufted out like a lion’s mane. Soon after, the delicate petals of the interior began to fold outward. The once green and dull plant suddenly was brought to life, its stalk peppered with slowly emerging pearls. The air immediately became sweeter with fragrance. It was a tentative, beautiful, delicate process. Gon dragged his eyes away from the bright white petals in time to watch Killua, eyes soft, share the beginnings of a secret, content smile with the garden. It seemed that standing there, white hair bathed in starlight, Killua was unfurling and blooming in time with the flower petals. Two children of the moon. Something tugged uneasy and foreign within Gon’s chest, and he clutched the fabric of his tank top right above his heart, disoriented, confused, until Killua turned his wonder-filled gaze at him and something abruptly clicked in his chest and everything suddenly seemed brighter and newer than before.

“You’re supposed to look at the flower, stupid.” It came out fond, hushed. Like a prayer.

Gon shrugged. His veins felt lit up from the inside with this new feeling. “I got distracted.”

The unfurling of the petals had finally stopped. For a brief moment, the four walls seemed to encase the garden in an impenetrable bubble of stillness.

Gon tried to preserve it. 

He really, truly did.

But he was already practically vibrating out of his skin, bloodstream alight, and Killua clearly sensed it because he was Killua, after all, and turned to him with an arched eyebrow. “Yes?” The faintest smirk danced over his lips.

“Did Killua like it?” It exploded almost violently out of him.

He was greeted with a nonchalant shrug. “It was cool.” 

Which meant that it was fucking awesome.

“It looks like you, Killua!”

“I’m not a plant.”

“Well if you were a plant, then it would look like you!”

Killua rolled his eyes. “Whatever. What are these even called?”

“I don’t remember what they were called. Aunt Mito always called them moon orchids, but I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be called something else. Whale Island is too wet for these but Aunt Mito tried to grow these in the house anyway! It didn’t really work. But aren’t they so pretty, Killua? The flowers only come out for a few days and only under moonlight, so it’s really lucky we went on a date now. Oh! They also have sister plants? Which are these pla—”

“Speaking of date,” Killua said, and Gon closed his mouth so hard his teeth rattled. “Is this it?” Killua grimaced, as if disgusted by his own phrasing. “I just mean that… is there anything else to do?”

“Nope!”

“Oh. So there’s nothing else?”

“That’s all I had planned for the date!”

Killua scuffed a shoe across the garden tile. “So is it just… over? Are we supposed to do anything else?” His bangs flopped over his face.

“Well, this is usually the part where we kiss!” Gon chirped, and watched with immense satisfaction as Killua’s face flushed red in bewilderment.

“Ki—. GON! I—” Gon couldn’t help the way his eyes traced the trail of Killua’s flush down his neck, across his collarbones. “Kiss? Do you always… do you always kiss your dates?”

“Sometimes! Only if they want to! Do you want to, Killua?”

“I don't know!” Killua’s shoulder hunched as he turned. “You know I’ve never... done it before.”

Almost on instinct, Gon’s hand found its way to one of the bunched up shoulders in front of him. He felt more than saw Killua, also like instinct, relax into it. Gon waited until Killua turned to glance at him again before smiling reassuringly. “It’s really not that big of a deal, Killua. I swear it! We don't have to do it!”

An eye roll. “You only say that because _you've_ done it before! Of course it’s not a big deal to you! You’re experienced!”

“But it doesn’t _mean_ anything.” He dropped his hand down to tangle with Killua’s. The lattice of their fingers settled the something in his abdomen, the gnarled and unknowable something he wished he could bring out of his chest and chuck into the atmosphere lest it overwhelm him. It made him feel weird and itchy and all kinds of right and _yes_ and _Killua_. “I don't even care whether or not we do it. Really. I just—” He shot Killua a bashful grin. “—want to be with you. So if you don’t want to, that’s fine.”

And it was fine! More than fine, actually. The strange, unsettling truth of the matter was that Killua not wanting to kiss was the preferred scenario. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to kiss Killua! He just also didn’t not not want to kiss Killua? He didn’t not not want to kiss anyone! But that sounded mean, it wasn’t like he didn’t not not not want to kiss them, he just didn’t not not not _not—_

Gon shut his eyes very tightly and allowed his mind to reboot.

The point (if there was one) was that Gon didn’t like kissing. And it wasn’t like he was lacking in experience, or good experience for the matter. There had been plenty of dates on Whale Island with random women that had ended with kissing, and plenty of dates with various others after he had become a hunter that had ended with the M word. (Making out. The M word was making out, but he was 17 and still couldn’t say the word “penis” without wanting to call Aunt Mito.)

For most of his childhood, Gon had mostly been left to his own devices. Aunt Mito certainly wasn’t a helicopter parent, and she was far too young to have even tried to be if she wanted to. The only true parenting he got was when they went on their picnic dates. Aunt Mito would often instruct him on the right way to treat whomever it was he took on a date: Hold their hand. Compliment them. Pay for their food. But most of all, make them feel good.

The insight always worked. Gon had held his dates’ hands, complimented their hair, paid for their dinners. And if kissing someone made them feel good, then Gon would do it! It wasn’t a hardship or anything! And he had picked up enough from all of the previous dates to know what felt good for them. He just. Didn’t know what felt good for _him_. Because everyone (Leorio) had always talked about kissing as a way for two people to really really get to know each other and fall in love with each other and feel tingly things with each other (when Kurapika snorted at this Leorio had screeched “HOW WOULD _YOU_ DESCRIBE IT TO A FOURTEEN YEAR OLD”) and to Gon, kissing just felt like touching his lips to someone else’s. There were never any tingly things (Leorio) or sparks (Kurapika) or butterflies (Melody), just the back-burner semi-pleasure of knowing he was making someone else feel good. Which was great! Just, that was it. Some nice woman with her lips on his lips somehow feeling tingly sparkly butterflies that Gon just wasn’t feeling.

But then again, this wasn’t some cruise ship tourist flirting with him on Whale Island’s dock. This was _Killua_. Killua, who followed Gon into wildfires without a second thought. Killua, who forced Gon to think twice before every stupid action he itched to make.

Killua, who was staring Gon down, open and soft and _scared_ , despite the proud set of his jaw.

“No. I think— I want— Fuck, _Gon_. I want to.”

The burning in his veins rekindled as if injected straight with moonlight. The way Killua said his name, _Gon, Gon, Gon, Gon_ , echoed through bloodstreams and wound its way down the capillaries in his arm, through the nerves and straight into the muscle where his hand, puppeted by desire, reverently cupped the determined structure of Killua’s jawline. It felt at home, here. He let his thumb run once over the crease where fading dark circles ended. It was a little too rushed, a little too rough. He had never known how to control himself.

Killua’s pupils blew wide. “Gon,” he whispered.

_Gon, Gon, Gon._

“Killua,” he parroted back, but any cheekiness was slipping away in the face of the squeezing in his chest. He felt all kinds of weird. Desperate.

“Gon.”

“Killua.”

“Idiot.”

“Killua.”

“Stupid.”

“Killua.”

“Are you just gonna keep saying my name?”

“You started it!”

Exasperation slid across Killua’s pale features. Gon could see Killua’s eyebrows furrow, feel the downturn of lips beneath his hand. It felt oddly intimate. He was suddenly hit by the incredible realization that they had never done this before, never just stood together with Gon’s hand cupping Killua’s face, and that actually they should do this more often, and also that maybe they should stay like this forever? Gon was happy to stay like this forever.

“Hey Killua, we should stay like this fo—”

“Are you gonna fucking do it?”

He stilled. The idea of giving up the overwhelming pleasure of just holding Killua to press their mouths together was ridiculously unappealing. But, it was what Killua wanted, so that significantly jacked up the appeal. And maybe Killua would let Gon hold him again after they were done? Gon nodded to himself. This seemed like a good plan.

He had just opened his mouth to say as much when five things happened in quick succession. 

1: Killua rolled his eyes so hard only the whites showed and 

2: breathed out a immensely put-off “Christ” and 

3: wrapped his hand around the back of Gon’s neck to

4: reel Gon’s face in to

5: kiss Gon.

Killua was kissing Gon.

It could hardly be considered a kiss, really. It was so tentative and stiff that it was more an accidental brushing of lips and sharing of air. Killua’s fingers were digging too hard into the nape of Gon’s neck and the way they were swapping breath was actually kind of gross. But when Killua’s lips carefully parted with his, Gon swore he felt electricity linger in their wake. His blood sang.

They separated just enough to look at each other without going cross-eyed. Gon’s hand remained firmly on Killua’s cheek, grounding them both, as he mentally sifted through the confusing information he was being given. His body was overheating. His brain cells were short circuiting.

Killua’s kiss wasn’t good. It was obviously a first timer’s kiss, which Gon had expected. A kiss he had expected from someone who had been isolated from all media and experiences of kissing for most of their adolescent life. Fine. Gon knew how to kiss, and he knew that Killua’s kiss objectively wasn’t great.

What Gon _didn’t_ understand was why adrenaline was thrumming through his system. His entire body felt like it was vibrating, the tightness in his chest expanding. He felt absolutely electrified. 

Oh. Well there was something.

“Killua? Did you use your nen on me?”

The stare he received was so unimpressed he could feel the plants surrounding him wilting. “What the fuck, Gon.”

“I’m just asking!”

“Why would I use nen on you?”

A good question. Gon knew the answer: Killua wouldn’t. But, this answer had the adverse effect of totally scrapping this theory. Which left Gon with zero theories. (He had only had one to begin with, but those were semantics.) Thinking was never his strong suit anyway. Action, though… 

Gon cupped the other side of Killua’s face with his other hand and hauled him in.

Their mouths met again, teeth knocking. Killua’s lips were an unmoving brick against Gon’s. Both their eyes were wide open, way too close, but Gon watched, enraptured, as Killua’s eyes slid from owlish and startled to half-lidded and heady to eventually, fluttering closed. Gon let his eyes shut as well as he pressed slowly further into the kiss.

In all honesty, it was a bit like trying to swap kisses with a concrete wall, given how petrified and out of depth Killua seemed. But Gon kept pushing, reigning in the instincts boiling up beneath his skin to just _take_ and instead let it simmer into a state of _be_ , of losing himself in the easy friction between their lips. 

They pulled apart again, barely a centimeter, before Killua was muttering an affronted “Hey!” and joining them together once again. This time, when Gon went to press their lips together, Killua matched his movements. Clumsily, but with earnest determination. He repeated the move again, and again, and again; the same rote drive Gon saw him apply in training translated to the heat of their mouths against each other. Gon lost track of how many times Killua had done it. What had originally begun as joyous amusement over the other boy’s tenacity was quickly turning into a haze of voltaic shock.

So Gon pressed deeper, and Killua pressed back. So Gon turned his head to let their lips slide at a new angle, and Killua tilted his head and completed it. So Gon sucked Killua’s bottom lip into his mouth, and Killua did the same but with a slight scrape of his teeth that made Gon’s head spin. They were competing, almost, but in the way two badminton players compete as they rally: each pushing their energy into the other’s court, marveling at the fluidity and power with which their bodies complement and yet grate against each other; each diving further and further in until the need to keep the birdie off the ground, to maintain that vicious static energy, almost supersedes the need to win.

_Wait._ Gon thought, totally bewildered. _Wait, what is happening?_ He had entered with the intention of one more kiss, to see if he could understand the weird electric undercurrent he felt when their lips met. Instead, the buzzing in his veins hadn’t abated but had turned frantic, almost violent. Every time they stopped to breathe, Gon was towed back to the swollen upturn of Killua’s cupid’s bow like a magnet, toes curling when they connected once more. The seconds between kisses were shorter, the space between their lips smaller, and the confusion in Gon’s brain was increasing exponentially. Gone was the calm, muddy sensation from kissing before. Everything was blown into hyperfocus. His nerves sang at the slightest huff of air. A choir. A cacophonous scream.

The pleasure was so overwhelming that Gon moved entirely on instinct, pressing his tongue to the seam of Killua’s lips. In an instant, Killua was gone. Gon blinked to focus on Killua, pupils blown wide, cheek prettily flushed, perched 5 feet away on the entrance gate. Killua blinked too, as if mentally processing how he had arrived there. They blinked in tandem. It was actually kind of romantic. Gon liked blinking with Killua.

The eye contact broke when Killua sprung to land right in front of Gon again, as if he had never left. His shoulders were hunched again. “Sorry. I just got surprised with the… you know.”

“Tongue.” Gon said, as if he was incapable of saying anything else. His brain had never adjusted more slowly to a situation. What about kissing Killua disarmed him so much?

“GROSS! You don’t have to say it like that.”

“Huh? Say what?”

“Say your tongue was in my mouth!”

“GROSS! Why do you have to say it like that, Killua?”

Killua finally met his eyes again, if only for a brief second before he rolled them skyward. “Are you kidding? You literally said we were talking about tongue!”

“But not about tongue doing that! Just about tongue! Tongues being tongues!”

“I literally don’t even know how that makes sense.”

Gon really didn’t know either. But it made sense to him, on some base, instinctual level. Almost everything Gon said came from instinct; the academic logic behind it was irrelevant as long as it simply felt right. But he was trying to be different. Somewhere between the years of selfish behavior and hurting people (hurting Killua), he had come to understand that most people think before they speak. Most people assess the situation and then say not always what they feel, but what is right. Most people can reign in the crackling current of their desire and say, “Hey, Killua. I’m really sorry if I made you uncomfortable with the… you know.”

Killua just pushed his hair off his forehead and sighed. “Whatever. And for the record, it’s fine. Just startled me.”

“Still, it’s really okay if you don’t want to.”

“Gon, it’s fine.”

“We can do something else, though! We don’t have to do…” He gestured vaguely. “... _you know_.”

Pale fingers reached up to gently encircle Gon’s wrists from where they were thrown haphazardly into the air. They guided Gon’s scarred hands back to their original resting place on either side of Killua’s face. If the crimson had at all faded from the cheeks Gon cradled, it was back full force. Killua shifted his eyes to the side and muttered, “It’s really fine.”

It struck Gon then that for all they may have looked alike, Killua wasn’t the flower. It was Gon who was the flower, and Killua, the moon, and Gon was the one blossoming under the beauty of his presence, the only person that could get him to burst wide open like this.

Their mouths met again, and Gon couldn’t help but shudder at the unbelievable intimacy of the first press of their tongues against each other. The way his body was alight was all new. He had never experienced anything like it, and then he remembered that while this may have felt like his first time, it was Killua’s _actual_ first time, and the wave of inexplicable need that crashed through him had him pushing further into the kiss.

Killua pulled away. “This feels weird.”

Gon pressed their foreheads against each other. “Do you want to stop?”

The hands that remained circled around his wrists tightened and dragged them bodily back together again.

Kissing with tongue was a different experience. Kissing _Killua_ was a different experience, Gon was learning, because Killua had a way of taking all the things that were just okay in Gon’s life and twisting them into things he had never known he could live without. Gon had long succumbed to the nuclear wave of desire chasing through his bloodstream, and now he easily, gladly accepted it as just another thing that hadn’t been right before it had been Killua’s. 

Gon hadn’t been right before he had been Killua’s. 

They broke apart again. Killua’s hands fisted in the thin fabric of Gon’s shirt, right above his raucous, pounding heart as he breathed, “Fuck. Does it— does it always feel like this?”

A reedy, desperate sound escaped from Gon’s chest unbidden. There were so many ways to answer that question, millions upon millions of words, but the only thing that tumbled out was a reverent “ _Killua_.”

_Killua, Killua, Killua._

* * *

Eventually, the franticness driving Gon forward subsided, and the kisses turned languid. Killua had caught on to the whole kissing business stunningly fast (unsurprising, as he was naturally good at literally everything, ever) and was now setting the pace, lips so skilled and sweet that they splintered Gon’s brain into warring factions of petulant covetousness and appreciative gratitude. They had shifted so that Killua’s hands were gripping Gon’s shoulders, and Gon’s hands were threaded in Killua’s hair, bodies pressed close, so close.

Killua pulled away, grinning. His eyes were lidded, his cheeks and lips splotched scarlet. The wild mane of his hair had been mussed by Gon’s too eager hands to a point beyond salvation, but Gon apologetically ran his hands through white curls in a half-hearted attempt to fix it anyway. It didn’t do much, but Killua shot him a hazy, content smile nevertheless. The something in Gon’s chest began to ache fiercely again. It seemed to never stop around Killua.

“Hey,” whispered Killua.

“Hey,” echoed Gon.

“Anything else left in the date?” Killua’s voice was softly teasing. 

“Nope! We’re finished for real this time.”

Killua just hummed lightly. His hand left its perch on Gon’s shoulder and instead moved, slowly, carefully, to cup Gon’s face in an inverted mimicry of their earlier position. The searing, frantic heat returned, and oh how it _burned_. Every single nerve in Gon’s cheek exploded into a starburst of feeling, alight with the hyper awareness of the calluses on Killua’s palm, the rough drag of his fingerpads across the expanse of Gon’s skin. Was it supposed to feel like this? Did Killua feel this way too? Or was the indescribable, impossible lightning a product of Gon’s design?

“Maybe we shouldn’t be done with the date, just yet.” Killua murmured. He leaned in once more, and Gon let his eyes slide shut into the helpless magnetism. Their eyelashes brushed, their lips ghosted, just barely, across each other, as Killua parted his lips and breathed,

“Race ya.”

With that, he was gone. By the time Gon had opened his eyes and stuttered out “Killua—?”, the other boy was already atop the gate. Before Gon could move to take a single step forward, Killua had elegantly leapt off the fence and onto the grounds of the main garden.

“Beat me, and maybe I’ll let you take me on a second date!”

“A second—” Gon’s mind reeled, but his body was already launching him over the gate in hot pursuit. “Killua!!!” The only response he got was a wild laugh. “Killua, get back here!!!” His shoes skidding in the dirt, Gon took off after Killua’s figure, his heart blossoming under the eudaemonic gaze of the moon.

**Author's Note:**

> > me: i’m painfully neutral about kissing i dont get it it’s overrated  
> my friends: that’s because all of the people you’ve made out with are hookups!! there isn’t any passion so ofc it doesn’t feel as good!!!!!  
> me: you’re absolutely incorrect. anyway i’m now going to write a fic proving your exact point
> 
> i haven't finished hxh yet (ope) so i wrote their aged up characters given the information i have with where i am in the anime rn! hopefully that explains if the characterization is a little off.
> 
> title comes from the common name of the plant from their date, queen of the night or epiphyllum oxypetalum!


End file.
